162 W. N. THAYER 
experience and field study have contributed in a small way to the 
text, but he has also drawn liberally on the published work of others. 
He is particularly indebted to Dr. N. M. Fenneman for advice and 
criticism. 
THE COAST RANGES SECTION OF THE PACIFIC BORDER PROVINCE 
The term ‘‘Coast Ranges”? may be used with perfect freedom 
when discussing topographic features within the United States, 
because in both popular and scientific thought the mountains desig- 
nated by the term are quite definitely delimited. Freedom in the 
use of the term is restricted beyond the International Boundary, 
however, for in Canada there is also a ‘“‘Coast Range” in no way 
related to the “Coast Ranges” of the United States, and the name 
is very definitely fixed in the language of the people as well as in 
scientific usage. It becomes necessary, therefore, to distinguish 
these features by appropriate terms that shall leave no room for 
ambiguity. This will be done in the present paper by the expedi- 
ent of using the plural form, “Coast Ranges,’’ for those mountains 
both in the United States and in Canada which face the open ocean 
and the singular form, “Coast Range,” for that Canadian member 
of the Pacific System which is separated from the open ocean by 
numerous mountainous coastal islands. The two features have but 
little in common and differ widely in their records of physiographic 
history. 
The mountains that border the coast of the United States from 
the Sierra de Los Angeles to the straits of San Juan de Fuca ‘“‘are 
neither a single range nor alike in character and history, but they 
are for the most part contiguous and may be treated as a single 
general province.’* A similar characterization may be made of 
the mountains of Vancouver and Queen Charlotte islands, the 
Alexander Archipelago, the St. Elias group, the Kenai Peninsula, 
and Kodiak Island, and for the same reasons they may be considered 
as an extension of the Coast Ranges of the United States and as 
belonging to the same province. 
There is some objection to this broad view, particularly because 
a large part of the region north of the forty-ninth parallel has not 
tN. M. Fenneman, Ann. Assoc. Am. Geog., IV, 133. 
